Cutting the Quick
by DifferentDances
Summary: ThirtyforThree theme 12  Alone. Inuyasha is dead. Kagome has a request. Sesshoumaru isn't sure how to react. Part one of a trilogy.


Title: Cutting the Quick

Pairing: K/I, S/K, weird S/K/I tension.

Rating: PG

Word count: 627

Notes: ThirtyforThree theme #12 - Alone. Inuyasha is dead. Kagome has a request. Sesshoumaru isn't sure how to react. Part one of a trilogy.

SKISKISKI

Those who have never seen a day's battle often operate under the misapprehension that once the fight ends, a mixture of exhaustion, numbness, and melancholy sets into the survivors, no matter the victor.

Sesshoumaru disagrees. His senses are never sharper than immediately following a battle, the blood lust raging wild in his veins once unleashed upon his opponents. When the battle is spent, the electric currents beneath his skin crackles with need, with want, with desire.

Any manner of pursuits after a successful battle can quell his blood– feasting, sex, sparring hand-to-hand...

His nostrils flare with anticipation, and he begins to seek out his prey. Perhaps a nightcap in the form of battering his brother around will curb any further demands from the ascending call of his instincts. Why seek out a diversion from someone else when such a ready target is so easily at hand? He glances around the scarred landscape, absently noting two broken bodies side by side; the monk and exterminator did not make it. He ponders absently whether the fox child survived, but does not allow himself to be distracted from his search.

It becomes clear that Inuyasha is not on that side of the field; Sesshoumaru is appalled to recognize that, somehow, he did not himself witness Naraku's destruction, even if all evidence confirms that the disgusting hybrid is no more. He turns slightly, retracing the tracks of the final, fatal blow with a slight frown, and finds his quarry not twenty feet behind him, in decidedly no shape to quench his needs. His eyes widen minutely at how very still his half-brother is, so unlike his usual foolhardy throbbing of _life _even when swaying unsteadily on his feet. Inuyasha is not meant to be still; even in quiet repose, the hanyou's aura teems with energy.

There is no pulse in the air, a fact that leaves Sesshoumaru feeling robbed of an unnameable future.

The pretty, if annoyingly brash, priestess is crouched over his half-brother. She lifts her head up slowly and meets his gaze unflinchingly. Her tongue darts out and wets her red lips. "Please save him." Dusky grey eyes meet his amber ones, wide with despair.

He is taken aback, for she is a proud creature; she does not beg.

"_Please. _Save him." Torn white sleeves adorn her bloodied arms gently cradling the red-swathed body, locks of dirty white hair mixing with the crusted blood. She is not without wounds of her own, but she doesn't heed the free-flowing blood as it stains the ground, the grass, the still body in her arms.

He is inexplicably outraged by her request. She is a proud creature. She does _not _ beg. He glares resentfully at the cooling body of his fallen half-brother. The hanyou is surrounded by more of the misshapen messengers of death than normal; Inuyasha has apparently eluded them once too often, and they await their long-cheated prey eagerly.

"Please."

There is something so very tragic and infuriating about her voice.

She is a proud creature. She should not beg.

He brings forth Tenseiga and dispatches the green gremlins. He watches his brother's body carefully, and is oddly relieved when the hanyou finally opens his eyes. Kagome lets out a cry of delight and leans over him, holding him tightly. Inuyasha's gaze flickers uncertainly between the human woman and the older demon, as though uncertain who to thank.

With a sudden flash of insight, Sesshoumaru does not know who he is more jealous of: Kagome, cradling his half-brother with unbridled relief, or Inuyasha, stretching forth his hand to her face with casual familiarity.

He watches silently. He is a proud creature. He does not beg.

SKISKISKI

Odd little piece, I know. Reviews welcome!


End file.
